Out of Focus

The new season: First Take — Boardwalk Empire

“You can’t be half a gangster Nuck.”

The new TV season is underway. As always, The CW got out of the gate early, and for what seems like the first time in a while, the four major networks are all launching the vast majority of their new series during the exact same premiere week, beginning tonight.

But it goes without saying that—NBC’s attempts to make people care about The Event not withstanding—the most anticipated event of the new season was last night’s premiere of Boardwalk Empire on HBO: A show that carries the prestige of Martin Scorsese making his first foray into narrative series television; a show created by one of the main contributors to the longevity of “the series that changed television,” The Sopranos; a show starring notable and recognizable talent most well-known for their performances in the independent film world; and, of course, a show from the aforementioned HBO, which does perfectly fine (thank-you-very-much) with the rest of its current slate creatively, but suffers the slings-and-arrows of a preponderance of critical media who have deemed the channel modern television’s Tiffany network and therefore responsible for always bettering the quality and influence of their shows. When HBO produces anything less than a Sopranos-like lightning-strike or critical darling hosannas falling short of The Wire while impish ingénue-networks like AMC, F/X and Showtime nip at its heels, the channel’s perch at the peak of the mountaintop becomes tenuous.

Of course, HBO simply became its own enemy, and people don’t treat HBO series like any others on television (even as the opposite has regularly proved true for its original movies). This reality actually informs this perfect marriage between the network and Scorsese; people don’t seem to judge his work on its own merits anymore either. “A Martin Scorsese film” must live-up to, if not surpass, his estimable canon, otherwise the backlash begins rather quickly.

I’m not necessarily arguing that such consideration is unfair; we expect more from better artists in any medium, and often, I think we expect even more than they give us no matter how great the work may be. Sometimes we do the opposite as well, and I’m sure I’ve been guilty of this as much as anyone—forgiving missteps because of a general admiration; nitpicking because of a regular distaste.

I can’t think of any network nor filmmaker in recent memory more criticized for producing disappointments that aren’t, though. Several HBO series some have considered misfires are actually excellent television; just maybe not the level of “excellent television” expected from the network behind The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, etc. But too many also forget that—its brilliant, now decades-old tagline notwithstanding—HBO actually is TV, and never more so than when it produces work within the series form. Regardless of the lack of commercials and production budgets, these programs remain television series, requiring different storytelling and narrative techniques than feature films. They are not 50-to-60 minute movies with an ungodly number of sequels. What that too often means is that episode one likely will not shock you into rapturous fidelity, and more often than not, even the best series will seem like they are just “warming up,” a phrase I’ve seen in reviews concerning Boardwalk Empire.

Continue reading “The new season: First Take — Boardwalk Empire“

Miscellaneous Miscellany-Part 2: This is why we don’t call it a comeback; continued abstractions

“Tomorrow” became Friday due to the nastiness that always descends upon me this time every year. The air changes, the temperature drops, and sometimes (or at least yesterday), even the atmosphere decides it’s so sick and tired of remaining pleasant that it will shake-up things and cause crazy tornado/hurricane-like weather right here in the five boroughs.

Whenever there’s climate change (small “c”s; local not global), my immunity system takes a holiday, and I begin my journey through the four-stages-of-Aaron’s-colds. Thanks to a lot of Cold-eeze and ColdCalm plus a couple nights of Nyquil-induced sleep, I’m into stage four, which allows me to act and react with some degree of effectiveness. Along the way, I’ve missed press screenings for several films I eagerly wanted to see, including Olivier Assayas’s five-hour-plus Carlos today. But sometimes … priorities … follow-through … all that … and here we are.

So to pick-up where I left-off on Tuesday, working harder to summarize rather than argue, more of what to expect (or not) in the coming days and weeks:

Continue reading “Miscellaneous Miscellany-Part 2: This is why we don’t call it a comeback; continued abstractions”

Miscellaneous Miscellany: Don’t call it a comeback; but here’s an abstract – Part 1

I’m still hedging my bets. This habit stuff is hard. (That’s been my motto all year: THSIH. It rolls off the tongue.) As I mentioned yesterday, barely a day passes that I don’t encounter at least one thing prompting my internal voices to say, “I’m going to write about that.” In fact, I generally keep a running list—one that enjoys running without stopping much more than I do; it obviously just keeps going and going even as I ignore it.

Some ideas I deem too old to use now. Some are relatively evergreen, and sooner or later, I will certainly focus on them. Some are extremely timely; if I don’t get to them soon, I will disappoint myself and leave them be, but then hopefully they will also drift away and and stop cluttering my brain.

When I began writing this post, I intended it to be a relatively brief, disorganized annotated table-of-likely-contents, describing subject matter that I hope to address in the coming days and weeks. Some may disappear, making an appearance here before fading away and not requiring another word. Others will demand my attention further. No promises either way, and the order that follows barely even signifies any preferences.

As I started writing, though, some things required more description than a a title and two-sentence summary, and the next thing I knew, this post was way too long. So I’ve broken it into parts—at least two, maybe three. We’ll see where we end up.

For now, assuming the habit holds, the following offers a taste of what’s clogging my brain:

Continue reading “Miscellaneous Miscellany: Don’t call it a comeback; but here’s an abstract – Part 1”

Shana Tova — New Year’s revisited; Back in focus (yet again, for reals, etc)

Late last year, amidst all the media attention on the concluding decade coupled with the annual exercise in breaking the best-and-worst of life and culture into 365-day chapters, I wrote about the camel-back-breaking-straw to my 2009 and Aughts. Over the ensuing three weeks, I patiently waited for the new year and decade to arrive.

In the process, I became fully determined to approach 2010 and the Te(e)ns with a realistic optimism I had practiced too little in the past. A paradigm shift in general attitude, shall we say? I would not simply “do” more; I would methodologically develop new habits that would serve me better in the long run. I knew it would be difficult: I was jobless (still am); broke (still am); angry at The World and maybe even The Universe (no more anger, but occasional frustration persists); pissed at both my professional and personal lives (the latter rocks now; the former continues to be less-than-cooperative); disorganized and suffering from a major case of general Life-ADHD (Uhm … I’ll get back to you on that one); and determined to reach a place of general contentment and satisfaction by the time I begin my own fourth decade and I turn 40. (Not the same things, of course.)

As always, I put too much pressure on myself. I won’t utilize this space to simply list all the new year/decade goals I scribbled into the first pages of 2010 journal(s), but as usual, a degree of ambition trumped the realities of time and energy. One of these goals involved (yet again) developing my writing into a habit rather than just an activity or endeavor. While I actually have achieved that objective to some degree, this blog has not played the role I originally intended.

Well, maybe I was thinking about the wrong new year.

Last Wednesday evening, Jews the world-over celebrated the beginning of 5771. I always imagined that the older I became, the more I would want to reconnect with the traditions of Judaism. That may yet occur come the day I have my own family and pass down the tremendous financial opportunity that is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah. However, within this present moment, I have discovered my reality has become the opposite of my younger imagination. I grew-up in an extremely reform and secular family, at times longing for a more spiritual and traditional connection to Judaism, but especially upon entering my 30s, I have become less religious (and less tolerant towards much organized religion), while still maintaining a distinct and strong Jewish identity.

That identity provided what I call an “Uh-huh” moment (as opposed to an “A-Ha!” one) this Labor Day and Rosh Hashanah as I prepared to face many complicated challenges during my immediate and short-term future. I decided that after eight-and-a-half months of 2010, filled with multiple highs and lows as well as personal successes and failures, maybe I had the whole new year/decade thing wrong. This September would present me with an interesting (maybe only to me) convergence of events.

A substantial group of people argue that 2010 is actually the final year of the first decade of the 21st century. A numerological examination proves this idea true; but organizationally, our society likes things neat, even and in simple packaging, so we place more emphasis on the one’s digit rather than the 10-spot. The Jewish calendar, though, has moved beyond this 10-based-year, giving us 5771 and the numerological beginning of a decade. So maybe my approach to and anticipation for the “new decade” was premature, by, say, a little over eight months.

Additionally, a week from tomorrow, I will turn 39, which also means I will commence my 40th year. The contrast of numerological and organizational ideals presented among the standard Western Christian-based secular calendar, the Jewish calendar and my own birth timeline fits nicely with the yin-yang battle too often present within my thoughts; the end of one decade, the beginning of another; maybe, they’re both correct.

So the time has come for my return to my little lightly-visited corner of the internet simply because every day I see, read or hear something that prompts one of the voices in my head to yell above the cacophony of others, “Oooh, I want to write about that.”

My M.O. needs markers, though, and I often require an approach that demands the cliché of a “fresh start.” For that reason, and for the first time since I started this blog six-and-a-half years ago, I’ve actually spent more than 30 seconds giving a shit about how this page looks. The changes are simple and few, but to me at least, they have a profound effect: adding some visual elements, changing the color scheme and hopefully creating a cleaner, warmer, more friendly feel.

Do you like it? I haven’t decided if I do. Like everything, it remains a work-in-progress, but it’s a start. I often spend so much time exercising my expertise in procrastination through planning or drafting without doing or finishing that I decided today would be different.

The series of images in the banner at the top of the page deliberately come from several of my favorite films. Upon further reflection, I realized after finishing the composite that they also—unintentionally and rather fascinatingly, at least to me—express multiple aspects of my personality, general but prevailing mental state and other psychoanalytical elements. In fact, I imagine I could write the equivalent of a psychology dissertation focusing on my own self-analysis including a complete (and accurate) character study simply through interpreting those six images. And still, I had a hard time editing because I also wanted to represent theater and television and all the other subjects upon which I plan to focus in this space.

For me, this blog continues as an exercise in habit and discipline. Will it remain primarily personal as during its infrequent sparks of life over the past couple years? I hope not, and I don’t think so. Will it focus mostly on film? Probably, along with a fair amount of television and hopefully theater. What it won’t be (at least, not most of the time) is my rushing to react to the news or events of the specific moment. Hell, that’s what Twitter is for, right? And more importantly, I promise myself to write with more care and more craft; to not draft and post as I have too often done.

I have a lot planned. I have a lot less written. My ambitions may again prove too big, but I intend to appear in this space at least three times-a-week without fail, and potentially more. I’m throwing this out there, into the digital ether, and I suppose we’ll see how I do. At first, with the new TV seasons and the New York Film Festival a-coming, it may appear a bit like a disorganized smorgasbord, but that, in too many respects, would simply represent the dominant environment within my brain on most days.

And with that as prologue, introduction and opening credits …

Awards Weekend Wrap-up Part II: Partially previewing Oscar, so, not so much a wrap

The Oscars are just hours away, and as much as I look forward to watching while I participate in Greencine’s Oscar Night Live Blog likely arguing with several other smart film folks as to why my opinions are more right than theirs (because that’s what it comes down to for us all, no?), I currently sit here enraged by the current Cablevision/ABC Disney dispute (fodder for another post), hoping that something gets resolved so I can watch and chat sitting on my comfy couch in front of my nice TV. I also find myself reflecting further upon my will win/should win picks (published on indieWIRE the other day). It seems like this could be one of the most predictable Academy Awards in recent memory, although, the one constant almost every year also seems to be that each year many of us say that only to discover that the vast majority of the time we’re right save for the one or two wins that are true surprises.

Roger Ebert’s Oscar predictions post from a few week’s back begins with the same claim: “I can’t remember a year when it seemed easier to predict the Oscars.” And yet today, I’ve read several tweets (including from Ebert) stating a feeling that there could be some huge surprises tonight, especially in the Best Picture category. I very well may regret these words as the credits begin to roll sometime during the 11 p.m. hour (at least, we should all hope it finishes before midnight!), but with the exception of a few categories, I still anticipate extreme predictability. Momentum is always a funny thing in Oscar campaigns, but the entire nature of the nominations and award voting process this year has taken on so many bizarre storylines — for my money having less to do with actual filmmaking quality than usual (and that’s saying something) – that variations from the conventional wisdom seem more impossible than ever.

Anyone who thinks the Spirit Awards sweep by Precious last night bodes well for its Oscar hopes be ignoring the fact that the overlap between voting blocs is relatively minimal, and history has shown that with the exception of acting awards, the winners rarely overlap. The films that are the small fish in the Oscar ocean get to be the barracudas in Spirits pond.

This is the year of The Hurt Locker, plain and simple. Some months ago on Twitter, before seeing Avatar, I said I thought Up in the Air would likely stop Precious from having a real chance at the big prize, thinking that The Hurt Locker had not been seen by enough people, did not actually tap in to the current zeitgeist as well, had not earned enough at the box office and, in my opinion, frankly was not as good a film. I still hold that last opinion, but I didn’t count on a couple things: I didn’t count on the surge to the top of critics’ lists that far outstripped the reception the film had received even at its Toronto premiere. I didn’t give enough credit to the idea that awarding the Best Director prize to a woman for the first time, especially coupled with all the press and conversation about how Bigelow makes antic-Nancy Meyers/Nora Ephron movies, would be so powerful. But most of all, I didn’t think about how compelling the Bigelow vs. Cameron storyline would be, with one participant being the supremely arrogant “king of the world” who, in his own words, revolutionized all cinema with the pioneering female director who made a war movie. Personally, watching the trajectory of The Hurt Locker during this awards season, I think nothing has helped the film’s chances more.

Continue reading “Awards Weekend Wrap-up Part II: Partially previewing Oscar, so, not so much a wrap”

Awards Weekend Wrap-up Part I: Lamenting a lack of Spirit

This year’s Spirit Awards marked the first time in over a decade-and-a-half that my vote didn’t count. Considering how my “Will win” vs. “Should win” predictions panned out – I only missed the screenplay award; more on that later – it seems that my votes likely wouldn’t have made a huge difference in the massive, albeit completely anticipated, sweep of the evening’s prizes by Precious. I had been an IFP member for all that time, and for those who don’t know, even after Film Independent took its larger budgets and events and split from the rest of the IFP community, they still allow their former sister chapters to vote.

I wondered if Steve Pond’s “expose” on Spirit Award voting from a couple weeks ago was actually news to anyone who even pays attention to the Spirits. Granted, maybe there is an IFC audience out there not intimately involved with the film industry, but is that same audience reading The Wrap? Regardless, the main point of Pond’s article was that lots (most?) voters don’t have the opportunity to see most movies. That was certainly a much bigger problem 10-15 years ago before everyone had a computer, Netflix or a DVD player, and frankly, I think it’s more due to the fact that people don’t take the voting seriously. I mean, especially if you’re a member of an audience that eschews awards shows – at least the Oscars – how much of an effort are you really going to make.

I used to go to the IFP awards screenings all the time in the late ’90s at the Pioneer. I considered those screenings alone worthy of paying for my annual $100 membership. And unless the film was a “major” indie, the audiences were often pathetic, not coming close to filling the 99-seat house. Yet, schedule never managed to stop the popular titles from overflowing. People made time for those films.

Ridiculously or not, I always took my voting seriously, and even though I didn’t vote this year, I still take it seriously; that if I’m planning on expressing my opinion on an indieWIRE ballot or here in my little corner of the Web, I’m going to do my best to have seen as many of the films (ideally, all!) as possible.

Continue reading “Awards Weekend Wrap-up Part I: Lamenting a lack of Spirit”

OOF Year-in-Review 2009: Top 10 films … adjacent

Uh … where was I. Really? Not so important. When I was so rudely interrupted by real-world endeavors, I was smack dab in the middle of expressing my love for any number of films released in 2009. I find it fascinating that such a crappy year (and awful decade) produced so many great films. Certainly, the correlation is a natural one: many great artists are tortured or, at the very least, bit-time complainers. But not everything in the world of film 2009 centered on morose melancholia or seriously issue-oriented; not even close.

The 10 films I listed as the best of 2009 in my last post were really just the sprinkles on top of the cinematic sundae that was 2009. Cutting to the required 10 only made me wish Mel Brooks’ joke in History of the World: Part One was actually history (or mythology, I suppose): that there truly were 15 commandments as then, our “top” lists likely would have 15 slots. And really, was 15 even enough? I count seven films that live on my next tier and each, at some point, spent time in my top 10 before I finalized my list and rankings. And beyond those seven, there were another 13 that popped into momentary consideration as I first pulled together all the titles I would consider.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of other films that don’t belong to this additional group of 20 that I still thoroughly enjoyed watching and while heavily flawed and even denigrated by many, I would still describe as “good” movies if only for pure entertainment value and/or as semi-innocuous comfort film. (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans fits into this category; but so do It’s Complicated and Julie & Julia, two easily dismissed pieces of fluff that really shouldn’t be and aren’t … even though both have tremendous problems. And if I get around to a post on some of the films I consider most overlooked of the year, I’ll be sure to mention Bandslam.)

So here and now, I would like to devote a little time to acknowledging the films that are Top 10-adjacent (my favorite term originating from Los Angeles real estate). In the 2009 Book of Aaron, they’re all still winners.

Top 10-Adjacent (Click on title for further comments)

Those were my “next seven,” and while I simply don’t have the patience (nor time, right now; the primary goal for 2010 is to do less, better, while not over-extending myself, so let’s start – sort of – now). Among the other distributed films I really liked in 2009 (in alphabetical order), I must mention Antichrist, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, The Cove, Duplicity, Food Inc., Forbidden Lie$, The Girlfriend Experience, The Headless Woman, The House of the Devil, The Hurt Locker, I’m Gonna Explode, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, Night and Day, Outrage, Racing Dreams, The Road, Sugar, A Town Called Panic and Two Lovers.

After the jump, more comments about the adjacents, and coming soon, more comments about the year and decade in film as well as the year in decade in television; and, who knows what else. (Well, I do, but no more promises without follow-through. So there.)

Continue reading “OOF Year-in-Review 2009: Top 10 films … adjacent”

OOF Year-in-Review 2009: Top 10 films of the year

The best film with a theatrical release I saw in 2009 was made in 1948. That’s not actually a knock on 2009, easily one of the stronger cinematic years this decade. But as I consider The Red Shoes to be among the top five greatest films ever made, I can’t ignore that the release of its pristinely restored version was a (if not the) highlight of my cinematic year. I’m only sorry I did not have the chance to attend the special screening at the DGA Theater to see it on a significantly larger screen than the one at Film Forum. Bruce Goldstein’s repertory programming at Film Forum is on its own almost enough for me to never even consider leaving New York, but oh how I wish their screens were significantly larger.

Yet I digress. My list of the top 10 films of 2009 completed in time for indieWIRE’s annual critics’ survey is now live at their site. I find creating lists to be simultaneously entertaining and frustrating exercises, but for me, the list simply can’t be the (only) thing. A list without an explanation might as well resemble a visually stunning plate of food that somehow lacks any flavor. So over the next two weeks, I shall explain my lists; the ones on indieWIRE as well as a few others. And so, first up: The Top 10 films of 2009.

Determining my top 10 this year was probably more difficult than any other year during these terrible Aughts, with the possible exception of 2004. Determining rankings (required by indieWIRE’s poll) proved particularly trying. I settled on my top 5 with relative ease and without internal argument. But after that, not only were there 10 or 20 films that convincingly deserved one of those lower-half slots, but they also kept hopping in and out of the list.

The difficulty in ranking combined with the pains of trimming illustrates a great year for film. However, it additionally proclaims a year in which the standout movies are mostly of such a high level that they simply don’t stand out from each other individually as much. I don’t mean to imply that the great films of 2009 aren’t unique and special; far from it, in fact. Rather, the voices that shouted, “Look at me” from screens this year were all so compelling, comparing most of them to each other in any attempt to rank them becomes quite complicated.

One special note about one title not on my top 10: Steve McQueen’s Hunger is one of the most unique and impressive achievements in cinema of the last couple years. I saw it at the 2008 New York Film Festival before it received a one-week release in LA. Because of that, I included it on my top 10 last year, as did 18 other participants of indieWIRE’s survey. However, it didn’t receive a New York release until this year, and it seems 10 critics voted for it this time around. If I hadn’t included it on last year’s list, it would definitely be on my current one, but I thought it inappropriate to list it twice. Where would it have placed this year? I’m not sure, and since I don’t have to make that determination, I’m not going to.

Of course, all of these exercises, especially when it comes to ranking, are more than simply subjective. And even in the days since submitting my ballot, I’ve thought to myself, maybe this film should replace that one; or, maybe this film should rank higher. One of the next posts will focus on the top films of the decade, which noticeably will not include any of the following titles. I’ll explain that deliberate choice further at that time. But for now, below is my list of the best of 2009, and after the jump, the reasons why:

Top 10 Films of 2009

Continue reading “OOF Year-in-Review 2009: Top 10 films of the year”

Blurring focus once again: Let the lists begin to roll

After a week filled with cramming and catch-up, I finally finished the first of my own lists. Best of the year. Best of the decade. My deadline was set by indieWIRE, and I’m a person who tends to do better with deadlines set by others. So … I got it done.

It’s a fascinating exercise every year, and it all takes much more explanation (I prefer that word to “defense”) than is appropriate on the indieWIRE ballot. As mine is processed and goes live on their site, I’ll post more detailed explanations here. (No, really, I will.)

But more importantly, after months of claiming a return to this space, I plan to actually follow-through now. As I’ve described before, I keep creating these walls for myself, and I’m determined to leave them behind as we enter the T(e)ens, but why wait until then. Now is the time for reflection, in no small part, so that as we move forward into the next year and decade, we can leave a lot of the reflection behind. Not that I would ever claim it’s a good idea to forget the past, but some of us can, on occasion, get too stuck within it.

I found that happening to me quite a lot this year, and it kept blocking me from all the projections I would make to the future. For some reason, I not only work best when my responsibilities are to others as opposed to myself, but I also seem to need benchmarks. Jan. 1 at 3 am west coast time will mark the exact instant I quit smoking 15 years ago. The 3 am was somewhat arbitrary (it’s when my pack ran-out), but New Year’s Day was timed with the first of California’s anti-smoking laws. And New Year’s is easy to remember. Big, tall, column-like, unforgettable benchmark.

So my first real post back couldn’t be just another review or opinion piece. It had to be something broad in scope; mammoth in size; a launching pad of one form or another. As ridiculous as that may seem, for months, I’ve intended to write something that would almost be an abstract of what may (or may not) actually be to come. But as is often the case, the larger the wall I build, the more I sometimes put off climbing over it.

In no small measure, I blame Twitter. When I started Out of Focus nearly six years ago, it was a repository for all the jumble of opinion and information exhausting my grey matter. At times I would get too busy with work (especially when I would be knee-deep in Tribeca), but other times, I would dash off a quick thought via Twitter, plan to delve into more detail later, but then put it off. Much as people communicate directly with others across Twitter in a way that they would likely never simply yell across a crowded room to transmit the same information, my natural inclination to detail (and, sure, verbosity), was somehow mollified by Twitter.

So now there’s a backlog, and I want to clear it out. I obviously still can’t simply start writing without this bookend, but I found new inspiration in all this reflection, and what pops-up next will come as it always has … just hopefully, more regularly. When I started the online incarnation of Out of Focus (as opposed to my column at UCLA in 1991-92 from which I stole the name), it was in part to distract from a job in which I found no enjoyment. The situation is different, but in some ways, even in a much different environment, I’m again looking for such a productive distraction.

So what better way to refocus than to time it with the end of a year, end of a decade and revealing of indieWIRE’s critics polls? Exactly. That’s what I was thinking, and here we are. I hope you stick around and visit now and then, even if you don’t ever call or write.

And so, with that in mind … Next up: Why (for one of the few times ever) I agree with A. O. Scott that Where the Wild Things Are is a significant achievement and the best film of 2009. And after that, we’ll delve into why I also agree (which happens more frequently now as long as a guy named Gallo is not involved) with Filmbrain that Synecdoche, New York is the best film of the decade.

Punch me once, shame on me

It would be too easy for me to assume that some supernatural force, I shall personify as “The Universe,” continues to conspire against my attempts to create (re-create?) a writing habit and routine. For the past several months, I keep experiencing these huge blocks; in fact, let’s call them Great Walls, analogous to China’s. Hurdling the walls shouldn’t be so difficult: each one simply involves a subject I want to discuss, ramble and rant over, but the sit-and-write cubicle of my brain keeps hiding.

Yesterday, however, I was determined to find it. Motivated, mostly focused, and ready to let my fingers do play a coherent form of trampoline on my keyboard, I settled-in at a table at the Sheirdan Square Starbucks (the one on 7th Avenue South near where W. 4th and Christopher Streets cross). Starbucks: I know. But my laptop battery blows, and Starbucks offers me the opportunity for WiFi (free for me), and more importantly, plenty of electrical outlets. I needed to write a few emails, but then I planned to tackle this one post I considered the great drawbridge gate which needed to be lowered so I could cross the moat and get at the more specific subjects concerning individual films, television, theater, and all those other things I think about and apparently, on some level, want to write about.

Climbing the walls I create for myself seems not to be enough for the chess-player some call God, others Fate, or as I apparently decided to personify it in all my conversations yesterday: The Universe. In reality, I’m rational enough to realize that there is no boogie-power out to get me, and I can certainly compare myself and my not-ideal current situation to others and recognize that in the proverbial grand scheme, I don’t have things so bad. Plus, I definitely see how a whole situation could have been avoided had I not essentially ignored one or two things, so of course, I blame myself. Still, with that said, yesterday, The Universe chose to fuck me up.

Now, apparently, if when these metaphysical powers-that-be decide the time is ripe to threaten and rob Aaron, they don’t intend for it to be simple or ordinary. No dark alleys. Nothing as simple as, “He came out of the shadows.” Only events that generally lead to a first response from others that resembles, “You’re kidding,” or, “You’re not serious,” or, “That’s not possible,” or … well, you get the idea.

So there I am: laptop on table. Sitting. Typing. Next to my laptop are my new (used) iPhone and my old (very used) iPod. The iPhone was new to me; after three years of using a now slow and constantly malfunctioning Blackberry Pearl, and no longer tethered to the Microsoft Exchange system of the ex-job, I was finally able to follow my Mac-addicted sensibilities and transition to the iPhone. Lucky for me, my best friend in San Francisco was kind enough hand-me-down his: an iPhone 3G sitting unused ever since he upgraded to the 3GS.

You know all those signs on the subway from the MTA or the NYPD giving advice on things not to do so you don’t get robbed or fall on the tracks? And you know how much of the time you look at the stupidly staged photos or the common sense idea and chuckle a bit at the simplicity of it, obviously thinking, “Well … duh!” That’s how the utter obviousness of this next thought felt to me after, even though I had perpetrated the idiotic mistake.

People: There’s not really any good reason to sit there with a $200 phone on the table where others can ogle it, especially when you’re sitting there alone. Keep it in your pocket. Would that have changed yesterday’s situation … most likely.

Continue reading “Punch me once, shame on me”